San Francisco Office Rents Pass Manhattan As Most Expensive In Country

Megalith

Megalith

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If holding the record for highest rent in the nation wasn’t enough, the Golden City now holds it for offices as well.

Office rents could tumble again if the tech sector falters badly, and there are anecdotal signs that some companies are struggling. Sidecar, a San Francisco-based ride-hailing start-up, last month said it would stop offering its services. Investors have lowered the valuations of several so-called unicorns, private technology companies originally valued at over $1 billion.
 
I'm sure the article uses the most extreme of cases, but that $72/sq.ft is that a monthly rent? In which case WTF $7200 a month for a 10x10 office? Yikes!

I guess because there's no rent control on commercial space this can go crazy like this. But hey, the only reason why people can charge this amount of money is because companies are willing to pay this amount of money. Not sure why, I have no idea why the "I gotta be in SF!" mentality is so strong, but whatever. Good for them in making money.
 
The reason is pretty obvious... San Francisco is a fucking peninsula... surrounded on three sides by water. There just isn't any room to expand. Scarcity increases prices. It's not like a typical city where offices can easily expand into the surrounding areas as the city increases in size/importance.

When it comes to actual importance relative to other local cities, San Francisco is not even at the top of the list. San Francisco isn't even the largest city in the Bay Area. Some of you may have heard of this place called Silicon Valley... well that isn't referring to San Francisco ;)
 
GotNoRice said:
The reason is pretty obvious... San Francisco is a fucking peninsula... surrounded on three sides by water. There just isn't any room to expand. Scarcity increases prices. It's not like a typical city where offices can easily expand into the surrounding areas as the city increases in size/importance.
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And Manhattan is a fucking island... surrounded on four sides by water with no room to expand. This is really an apples to apples type of comparison
 
sfsuphysics said:
And Manhattan is a fucking island... surrounded on four sides by water with no room to expand. This is really an apples to apples type of comparison
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The San Francisco bay is a bit more wide than the rivers surrounding Manhattan...
 
GotNoRice said:
The San Francisco bay is a bit more wide than the rivers surrounding Manhattan...
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Ya! Plus those building's in Manhattan just fall down like crazy after a couple hours of fire. Who wants to work in that?!?!

WTC7 wont go away
 
GotNoRice said:
The San Francisco bay is a bit more wide than the rivers surrounding Manhattan...
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and... ? It's not like they're putting buildings on the water, if you want to expand outside of Manhattan you can, just like if you want to expand outside of San Francisco you can, it just won't be in either of those too locations.
 
sfsuphysics said:
and... ? It's not like they're putting buildings on the water, if you want to expand outside of Manhattan you can, just like if you want to expand outside of San Francisco you can, it just won't be in either of those too locations.
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There are 19 bridges connecting Manhattan island to the surrounding area. San Francisco has two bridges... The Golden Gate to the north, and the Bay bridge connecting to Oakland in the east. You could count the San Mateo bridge as a 3rd if you are willing to take an hour detour south.

19 vs 2, apples to apples?
 
GotNoRice said:
There are 19 bridges connecting Manhattan island to the surrounding area. San Francisco has two bridges... The Golden Gate to the north, and the Bay bridge connecting to Oakland in the east. You could count the San Mateo bridge as a 3rd if you are willing to take an hour detour south.

19 vs 2, apples to apples?
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Looking from the south I see 1, 101, 280, El Camino Real. Are these not viable roads?

It blows my mind how close people choose to live next to each other in these places. These "cities" are like 5 miles from each other....and they all act like they are totally different biomes from the city 5 miles away ("Dear Sir, I am not from San Francisco, I am but from Berkley!").

Here in DFW, I drive 5 miles just to go to a store or restaurant. Heck I drive 60 miles each way to work....and I do it in an hour!
 
westrock2000 said:
Looking from the south I see 1, 101, 280, El Camino Real. Are these not viable roads?
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As a resident of the Bay area, no they aren't viable.

Highway 1 and El Camino aren't actual highways. They are typical stop-and-go roads with lots of traffic lights.

Also there aren't any actual highways in SF. 101 and 280 stop before they get to the city, and they change into normal surface streets. Although I live in South Bay, it takes me 1 hour to get to SF, then another hour to get anywhere in SF because of the shitty infrastructure.
 
Ok, I live in San Francisco and have driven these roads quite a bit, so let me interject a bit here, 101 and 280 actually DO go into the city, at least from the south. On 101N it ends up splitting to Van Ness (city streets), or 80E (freeway to bridge/East bay), 280N ends up going to the Embarcadero, and then yeah city streets all in all. Coming from the north bay yeah after the GG bridge there is no freeway into the city.

That said, 19 bridges vs 2, does that really help? I'm going to plead ignorance on this part because I don't live in that area, so maybe those bridges actually are useful. However looking at a traffic map now (1pm local time in NYC), just about every street in Manhattan is red/yellow so even if all those bridges are useful at getting people in/out of the city they're going to run into similar situations with slow moving, I'd be interested to see what color the traffic is on those bridges around 4-5pm though.

Only real nod I'd give Manhattan is that there is relatively low car ownership levels because their subway system is superior to ours for getting around the city, our subway is useful to get from the East Bay into downtown, but from there not so much.

That said, I still contend it is an apple's to apple's comparison, you can't expand in Manhattan any more so than you can in downtown SF. You could build offices galore in San Jose, or Oakland, where more people actually live, but the desire to be in SF much like Manhattan vs. other areas of NYC, is high which is why it commands these high rents.
 
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